How do you know if your wife is cheating on you? Is it a change in her mood? Does she leave the house in the evening? Does she always want to go out with the girls? Or, any number of the other hundreds of things to look for? Mine is just a gut feeling.

I came home from work and she was on the phone. The second I came in she said, "Gotta go, he's home, bye." That's it, which gave me this terrible gut reaction.

I thought about asking her who she was talking to but she could say anybody, even a telemarketer. Thinking like this couldn't just come into my mind, could it? It must have been in my conscious memory somewhere. I didn't want it there. I didn't like it. I am not good with change. I'm a more old fashioned leave it alone till it breaks type guy.

Cindy and I (I'm Ron) have been married going on twenty-four years. We have four kids, two grown and two teenagers. We don't have a lot, but what we have is ours. Don't really owe anybody. We have a small house but it's paid for. Our cars aren't the newest but there are no payments. We probably have a few credit card debts and that's about it. We're an average American family and try to live within our means.

We work, eat, do a few things as a family, take care of the house, do the school thing. That's going to everything your kid belongs to: sports, band, scouts and any other thing they're involved in. We sometimes even have dinner together, which is a rarity nowadays.

Our sex life is probably like most people our age, once every two weeks or so. I wish it was a lot more but it takes two to tango. Cindy hasn't been much into dancing lately, pun intended.

Because of my stupid gut, I'll now have to be on the lookout for any odd signs from Cindy. It's like I don't trust her anymore and for no reason. I'm just hoping my gut feeling is only indigestion.

My problem is that I'm no super sleuth. I don't know much about the video cameras, phone bugging stuff, whatever the hell that is, and I'm not rich enough to hire a private investigator. Especially since I don't have the slightest clue what I'm looking for.

Cindy handles all the finances so I have no idea what she pays or when she pays it. If I start going looking through all the bills, she's going to want to know why. What do I tell her? My gut hurts so you've been fucking around on me? Boy, I bet that would go over big.

Our marriage seems normal, what ever that is in this day and age. We met while in our twenties, dated about a year, and then got married. She pops out a kid about every two years. I got tired of the pop outs so I had a vasectomy after the last one.

Well, this was one of those days where we all, the two teenagers, my wife and I, have dinner together. The kids talked a little about school and Cindy talked about her part time job at the library. After the last two kids entered high school she was getting bored and got a job at the local library. She was part-time and her hours were irregular.

Maybe that's one of the places I needed to check out. But how do I do that. I can't just take off work and sit in front of the damn library to see who she talked to. It would be everybody who walked into the damn place. She's the librarian.

Tonight she was going to her girls' card club so I guess I could start my private investigation after she leaves. I would have to follow her in my old truck. I could hardly afford a rental like they do in the other stories.

I left minutes after she did. I knew where she was going because she told me and left me a number where I could get hold of her if I needed her.

I lost her or rather she lost me in the traffic so I just drove over to Marge's house where the card game was supposed to be. When I got there I saw Cindy's car among others in front of the house. I waited a few minutes to make sure no one else was coming and then got out of my truck, which I parked a couple of houses down, and walked up to one of the windows and peeked in.

When I looked in, I saw two card tables with four women around each one playing cards. It was another dead end so I slowly backed up to return to my truck and stepped in a pile of dog shit. "Damn-it," I said softly and continued to my truck. I had to clean the shit off my shoes before getting in my truck. Damn! It stunk.